Saturday Matinee – Iguana Love, Mantis Love, Don Shaffer & Elizabeth Cotten

Henry Lizardlover, born March 27, 1954 as Henry Schifberg, is a herpetoculturist, writer, and photographer who has lived with as many as 60 lizards in his home.

Iguana love [via].

Mantis love [via].

Don Shaffer was the inspiration behind Radar O’Reilly, a character in the popular novel, movie and TV series “M*A*S*H.” It disturbs me how Hollywood co-opts and distorts the true contributions of people of merit and presents them as caricatures, as they did with Shaffer, Joe Rochefort, Adrian Cronauer, and many others.

Elizabeth Cotten had an interesting self-taught finger picking style that’s difficult to play – unless it’s played left handed on a right-handed guitar (and yes, her last name is spelled “Cotten”).

90 years old, she was still pickin’.

Playing guitar was tough enough for a lefty like me. I was never proficient on guitar or bass, and could never hold a pick; however, I knew some fakes enough to fool some folks. Learning on a re-strung guitar is probably a worse handicap for a southpaw than just flipping it over and keeping the standard tuning. That way, if there’s a guitar handy, you just pick it up and blow the right-handers away (like Jimi Hendrix did).

Wish I’d figured it out way back when. Coulda, shoulda, woulda, all on the Saturday Matinee. Have a great weekend, folks.

Scientific Hot Links

You Got Snakes

Sexy People.

The Party Of The Wealthy.

Canada’s House of Common addresses a potential threat to civilization [via].

This song was a hit on pop radio in the early 1960s, and it’s enough to make you wanna puke. [Wiki: The song was composed by Ghanaian musician Guy Warren in 1956 under the original title “An African’s Prayer (Eyi Wala Dong)”.]

The New Dimensions in Testimony program is pretty awesome. More here.

“‘I now have work for 20 years,’ he exclaimed joyfully.” Disturbing true story here.

Classic list of everything blamed on Anthropogenic Global Warming Climate Change: The Warmlist.

ICYMI Department: The Institute for Centrifugal Reasearch: Gravity Is A Mistake. Must see video [via].

Searching for Twitter followers with the promise of absolutely no content, no following and no retweets.

Top image found here, caption inspired by this:

Saturday Matinee – Goats, Martha’s Birthday Party, ICR Documentary, Doc Watson & Friends

Goats. [via]

Martha’s Birthday Party. This is by the same guy behind The Perry Bible Fellowship.

Fascinating short documentary from the Institute of Centrifugal Reasearch [via].

“Bury Me Beneath the Willow” performed live at MerleFest 2002 by Doc Watson, Sara Watkins, Chris Thile, Sean Watkins & Byron House. The song is an old traditional that likely originated in the 1800s. From The Mudcat Cafe, commenter “Stewie” posted this:

Meade’s earliest printed citation for this is Sandburg’s ‘American Songbag’ (1927), the same year as the Carter Family’s recording and 4 years after the first recording by Henry Whitter in 1923. Other recordings earlier than the Carters were: Ernest Thompson (1924), George Reneau (1925), Kelly Harrell (1926), Ernest Stoneman (1926), Burnett & Rutherford (1926) and Holland Puckett (1927). [Info from Meade et alia ‘Country Music Sources’ p 197.]

Very cool. You can hear the Carter Family’s version here.

That’s a wrap for this Saturday Matinee, and have a great weekend.

Slow Commute 1978

Slow Commute 1978 MA

1978 blizzard, south of Boston, Massachusetts.

The February blizzard was the second one to hit that year, the first being The Great Blizzard of January. I remember that one – whiteout and windchill of -60F. Assuming your car could even start there was nowhere to drive, and my 5 minute walk to get bread and bologna was brutal.

[Found in here.]

300 A.D. Roman Swiss Army Knife

GR.1.1991

Yeah, you think I’m kidding. Check it out.

Saturday Matinee – Pete Candoli & Red Nichols & Al Hirt; Scott Biram, B.B. Chung King and Leon Redbone

Red Nichols, Pete Candoli & Al Hirt playing “Hot Lips.”
If that video wasn’t so entirely bitchin’ we’d never have posted it – Every decent link on the U-Toobage we found had “embedding disabled.” Some anusbrain copyright jerks don’t understand the concept of free advertisement. Let’s move on.

Scott Biram is a one-man ass-kickin’ rock machine.

“Mumbo Jumbo” by B.B. Chung King & The Screaming Buddaheads 2007. The Tail Gators did a song by the same name in 1988.

Here’s some fun etymology: In Japanese American slang, a “Buddahead” used to mean a Japanese American from Hawaii (h/t Osprey 1) and “Mumbo Jumbo” (Mandingo, West African in origin) was a bugbear who appeared at night to resolve marital disputes. Mumbo Jumbo was not nice. He’d beat the crap out of wives who disobeyed their husbands.

Let’s lighten it up a bit. Here’s Leon Redbone, one of the few folks I can think of (besides you, of course) who is welcome at my doorstep any time.

That’s it for this episode of The Saturday Matinee. Have a great weekend and be back tomorrow for more nonsensical oddities.

Meet The Flintstones

Fred & Wilma Flintstone

That looks like a young Tommy Chong to me. The one on the right, I mean…

[Found here.]

Rockin’ Wanda

Rockin' With Wanda

“A collection of great country songs in the rhythmic singing style of WANDA JACKSON.” I thought it might be a ripoff record of Wanda Jackson covers due to the subtitle. Apparently not. This was her 2nd album, recorded in 1960, and she was featured on yesterday’s Saturday Matinee as well.

[Found here.]

1941 Gas Masks For The Elderly

But it can’t happen here…

[Found here, via here.]

Christmas Eve 1903

Santa 1903 Life Magazine

William Henry Walker (1871-1938), Santa Speeding Down Road in Motorized Sleigh, 1903. Charcoal on paper. Published in Life Magazine, December 10, 1903.

Santa’s driving a 1903 Winton, the first automobile to be driven across the United States in that same year. [Found here, via here.]